PC industry takes on Apple with cringing “PC Does What?” ad campaign

The mere fact MS are doing Android products at all is utterly damning. Not only is it a highly public announcement that they've lost their total control of the game, it's a humiliating admission that they know they've lost it too. And don't think a single one of their competitors - Google most of all - has missed this admission, or not be looking to grind their faces into it every which way they can.

The same words where said when MS released Office for OSX.

[Citation definitely required.]

Ok.... don't show my family that post.... they will have proof that my memory is failing..... so what was I thinking of? Hmmm...

"...So the five of them have teamed up to take on Apple and make the PC cool again..." -- You guys are TOTALLY missing the boat in this article. The five are *not* competing with Apple, they're competing with THE MOBILE PLATFORM AS A WHOLE.

Just look at the numbers. Between 2010 and 2013, iPad sales were EXPLODING, until other credible tablet and phone offerings began to undersell Apple. The entire period from 2010 to 2015, Apple's own Mac sales are only slightly increased. The difference is so small, it looks virtually flat-line, against the sale of mobile devices as a whole.

And if you look at the broader market, ANDROID is the real winner, here. At the same time that PC sales have been plummeting and Macs have more-or-less flat-lined, mobile device sales with Android have been going through the roof. And you can see this in the graphs of market share held by operating systems over the same time period of 2010 to 2015. Android is a hockey-stick, while BOTH Mac and Windows are basically flat-lined in comparison.

PC suppliers and manufacturers are clubbing together now, to save themselves from a tidal wave of mobile devices. By the end of this decade, I expect that the only people who will still have "desktop" hardware, will be engineers, hobbyists, and high-end content producers.

Everyone else, including possibly gamers, will be on some sort of mobile platform. Why? Because it's the only truly "personal" computing platform available to consumers.

Microsoft makes $10/month from everyone who has an Office 365 subscription. That's $10/month regardless of whether people are using Office on a Windows PC, on a Mac, on an iDevice, on a Windows Phone, or on an Android phone. They gain more money by reaching the greatest number of subscribers; those subscriptions are far more valuable to them than keeping Office exclusive to Windows Phone in a vain attempt to get a few more percentage of people on Windows Phone.

Uh-huh. And why do you think MS are doing Office 365?

Because it's easier for most customers (and many businesses) to mentally justify a low-but-recurring cost instead of a high-but-one-time cost? Because selling their most popular software to all potential users is more important to their bottom line than trying to lock people into an unpopular phone OS? To make money, because that's what all businesses try to do?

Emphasis mine.

Now, given that 10 years ago Microsoft already had all of these users – both potential and existing – in its freaking pocket, what do you think changed?

Key word: HAD those customers. Obviously there were better alternatives, so customers went elsewhere.

Competition is good, companies wouldn't spend money on R&D or improve their products if they just had to sit around and let the money roll in.

People who buy Apple are doing so for the style (and they don't mind paying more). Any difference (alleged) between the two in function are irrelevant.

Yeah, I'll remember your inane comment when I need to install a new boot drive in a Mac and to install the OS on the new drive all I need to do is a simple copy.

Try doing that on any Windows based computer and let me know the results (hint, it doesn't work).

That's inane to the average user. Apple is fashion. The way it's marketed and presents itself follows this logic. I don't have anything against Apple, they make great looking products, but are too expensive for me. The minor thing you mentioned is completely silly compared to possibly paying an extra $500 for that feature.

Quote:

Any difference (alleged) between the two in function are irrelevant.

I point out a difference that's not alleged and you still call it marketing? Umm, ok.

There are many others but I know you won't let facts get in the way of a good rant.

Have a nice day.

The thing you mentioned is not marketing and I didn't say it was, nor am I ranting. Apple has a culture attached to it. I have nothing against Apple, except that they're expensive. I can't even compare the usability of functionality, of Apple vs Windows, because I'm automatically priced out and I can't run steam. Well, I think steam does have presence on Mac, but few games would work.

IMO, people attach to Apple as a brand while PC is more agnostic. If you're really into Apple, great. Saying the "PC industry" is taking on Apple seems weird to me. Outside of the number of games, what does the PC have that a Mac can't do? The boot drive thing will mean nothing to most consumers and won't be appearing on Apple commercials.

My pc can do things I no longer need it to do - scan, print, and burn cds. And if universal apps become popular (which will be the day), then no one will need the traditional pc ever again and can use a tablet or even a phone.

If the "PC" consortium wants people to upgrade, show them a computer with pure SSD storage and have the computer start up in less than 5 seconds, and open stuff up instantly. Hell, I even tested SuSE 13.2, and it was just as fast as win10 (actually was even faster believe it or not!).

Of course, thanks to ssd tech, tablets aren't exactly slow either...

Hmmm. Try doing software development on a tablet or smartphone. Or even on most laptops.

I do all my development work on a Dell Precision M2800 or Dell Venue tablet and sometimes on my Android phone via DroidEdit. If I ever need more umph I just remote into a beefier system.

Curious, do you use a keyboard for typing on the phone? Don't you miss the Number keys block, on the phone/tablet keyboard?

People who buy Apple are doing so for the style (and they don't mind paying more). Any difference (alleged) between the two in function are irrelevant.

Yeah, I'll remember your inane comment when I need to install a new boot drive in a Mac and to install the OS on the new drive all I need to do is a simple copy.

Try doing that on any Windows based computer and let me know the results (hint, it doesn't work).

That's inane to the average user. Apple is fashion. The way it's marketed and presents itself follows this logic. I don't have anything against Apple, they make great looking products, but are too expensive for me. The minor thing you mentioned is completely silly compared to possibly paying an extra $500 for that feature.

Quote:

Any difference (alleged) between the two in function are irrelevant.

I point out a difference that's not alleged and you still call it marketing? Umm, ok.

There are many others but I know you won't let facts get in the way of a good rant.

Have a nice day.

The thing you mentioned is not marketing and I didn't say it was, nor am I ranting. Apple has a culture attached to it. I have nothing against Apple, except that they're expensive. I can't even compare the usability of functionality, of Apple vs Windows, because I'm automatically priced out and I can't run steam. Well, I think steam does have presence on Mac, but few games would work.

IMO, people attach to Apple as a brand while PC is more agnostic. If you're really into Apple, great. Saying the "PC industry" is taking on Apple seems weird to me. Outside of the number of games, what does the PC have that a Mac can't do? The boot drive thing will mean nothing to most consumers and won't be appearing on Apple commercials.

I might be old skool, but to me, the dichotomy of Mac vs. PC never made any sense. They're all PCs (personal computers). But it's also clear that, regardless, the term "PC" makes little sense today, as my smartphone is a personal computer as much (if not, in some ways, more) as my desktop and laptop.

"PCs" and Macs are basically the same thing nowadays (i.e., they use the same guts, which wasn't always the case) The main difference is the OS they run (which can be replaced across the board, thus "hackingtosh" and linux boxes, Mac users using Windows, etc.) And with the increased use of VMs, using more than 1 OS has become trivial (not that it was particularly hard to do via dual boot or anything).

But kudos to Apple for managing to convince people otherwise, that was an impressive marketing feat that proved durable as well.

Leave it to the commodity PC industry to lie about battery life and hype "state of the art sound" instead of focusing on building better products.

Macs continue to command all the profit in the PC market because they're better products, period.

I'm sorry, a $900-$1100 ultraportable laptop with a 1366x768 screen is not what I would call "better products, period," but that's exactly what the Macbook Air 11 is. Hell, for that price, in 2012, I got a VAIO Duo 11 with a 1080p IPS display.

The MacBook 12, with its single USB Type C port (for both charging and peripherals), its ultra-shallow keyboard, and its unremarkable processor has also gotten decidedly mixed reviews, not universal acclaim.

Some Macs are very good. Some are decidedly "meh." Some laptops from other manufacturers are very good. Some are meh, and some are terrible. But pretend that Mac = good and not Mac = bad is a very shortsighted, biased, inaccurate view of the 2015 laptop market.

I'd make my point, but even Intel doesn't seem to be on board with it. Ergonomics. No tablet or smartphone has ever been designed for long periods of writing even with a case-keyboard. Even laptops are no good if they are used as their namesake (like in the given commercial). A desk and a keyboard is the proper way to type.

I don't think PCs left anyone's lives, but thankfully we just don't constantly need new ones anymore. I'm actually curious if this symptom is going to hit other industries, like cars, if people end up buying cars that don't need replacing as often.

I agree with you completely --- and so does Apple. Apple is successful because it is the one company in this space that isn't living in Fantasyland. Apple accepts (and glories in) the following points- computation is cheap. CPUs are cheap. Storage is cheap. Screens are cheap.- the human body is not cheap, and it's not going anywhere.- THEREFORE computation should adapt itself to the human body.- THEREFORE the appropriate way to compute is through a COLLECTION of devices, from wrist to phone to tablet to laptop to desktop, all optimized for a PARTICULAR type of interaction with the human body and FINALLY- THEREFORE the most important role of an OS company today is to provide both the OS's that drive these different UI modalities AND the glue that ties them all together.

You might think these points are obvious, but Apple is the one company not trying to sell half-assed devices that do three things badly. Apple says: We have a UI that makes sense for watches, and a DIFFERENT UI that makes sense for phones and a DIFFERENT UI that makes sense for keyboards. MS says: We have a UI that works everywhere. The one accepts the reality of what I've said above --- the human body comes first, and computing needs to adapt to that. The other insists that it can force its vision of 1995 onto 2015.

This sounds like fundamental misunderstanding or misattribution of responsive design (or convergence, or universal apps, etc). MS doesn't have "one" UI that works everywhere; they have a framework for making apps using shared code-base with shares design language that responds to the device accordingly. At the risk of oversimplification it's easily comparable to the dynamic layouts that iOS and Android use, but then scaled again to the desktop.

Responsive design covers screen size over a certain range. It doesn't get from touch-first to keyboard first; it doesn't give you a design appropriate to a watch; it doesn't give you a design appropriate for a TV box or a car.

Like I said, the PC world WILL NOT ADMIT that it got this fundamentally wrong; and they'll be insisting that they're right even as Apple moves on to sell cars (with a bespoke UI, not an attempt to force iOS or OSX into a different form factor) and doubles in size yet again...That's the way these things go. Blackberry and Nokia are both at the end of the line, but I don't see either of them admitting they fundamentally misjudged the world.

I can't imagine that for 95% of the people out there they really need a new pc if the 5 year old one is still working.There is simply no need for most usage ...And people who need more ram/cpu power/better battery for whatever reason will replace one anyway.

Heck it's been often counter productive to buy a "new one" seen the last 5 years most I could buy in the "consumer segment " (= when you don't need much ram/cpu/battery) was stuff with mirror like and/or ridiculous low resolution screens (lucky this seams to be slowly changing again).

I really struggled to find a replacement 2 years ago for a broken down Core2 "email/browse/video" laptop but with a decent non glossy screen without paying trough the nose for "enterprise grade" laptops (which i really did not needed ).

My wife went back to school this year and her old MacBook pro couldn't hold a charge anymore. I got her an hp stream 11 for under $200 and it's more than capable for her needs. That's really all you need to see how much of a commodity the PC is now. It'll probably last a good number of years too.

My one and only gripe with this:

You could have replaced the battery for under $200, and not added to a landfill.

She'd also be lugging around a laptop a good 3-4 pounds heavier which ran much slower. Good for you for thinking of the environment, but her old mbp is 7 years old. Time to let it go.

It's a lousy slogan. The whole campaign has about as much sense behind it as a bunch of automotive manufacturers teaming up to give us a 'Car does What?' ad campaign.

Computers are a commodity item and frankly not that exciting any more. That doesn't mean that there isn't room for one particular brand of computer to market itself as being better than the other brands, whether that brand is Apple, Dell or whatever, but the whole 'PC vs Mac' thing has been dumb for a long time now.

Particularly dumb since Macs are a drop in the ocean. That battle was won long ago. There hasn't even been a fight for many years.

Even Windows 10 soon has a bigger market share than OS X.Windows vs Mac, Mac doesn't even have 10% of the market.

Except for Apple there really isn't a good Digital lifestyle. moving from one device to another is difficult and painful. Even more so in a multi OS setup(windows, android and ios)

That was actually kind of my point; they've spent $70 million on IMO wasted advertising, when the money would be better spent on pushing for the kind of interoperability that would really sell machines.

This is where Apple is standing out right now, and why Macs are still relevant as they're part of the lifestyle; a complementary device to your phone/tablet, not something to be left behind and forgotten. The PC market needs an equivalent or no amount of advertising is going to make a difference.

I mean, we have a range of syncing and cloud services now which makes interoperability between devices a bit easier, but Microsoft has been dropping the ball on the rest; being able to switch automatically from tablet to desktop mode in Windows 10 is fine, but that's just for a single device. Hell, Windows 10 doesn't even support CalDAV and CardDAV properly; though some people have had luck by using iCloud support to connect them, which is a bit of a gaff when they're ideal for keeping devices synced up.

My point was that PCs are still very relevant, but throwing money into this ad-campaign isn't helping when the features that would make them relevant are underdeveloped or non-existent. Hell, Windows 10 doesn't even support CalDAD and CardDAV properly, which is a huge omission; Microsoft are actually going backwards on interoperability rather than forwards!

Except for Apple there really isn't a good Digital lifestyle. moving from one device to another is difficult and painful. Even more so in a multi OS setup(windows, android and ios)

That was actually kind of my point; they've spent $70 million on IMO wasted advertising, when the money would be better spent on pushing for the kind of interoperability that would really sell machines.

This is where Apple is standing out right now, and why Macs are still relevant as they're part of the lifestyle; a complementary device to your phone/tablet, not something to be left behind and forgotten. The PC market needs an equivalent or no amount of advertising is going to make a difference.

I mean, we have a range of syncing and cloud services now which makes interoperability between devices a bit easier, but Microsoft has been dropping the ball on the rest; being able to switch automatically from tablet to desktop mode in Windows 10 is fine, but that's just for a single device. Hell, Windows 10 doesn't even support CalDAV and CardDAV properly; though some people have had luck by using iCloud support to connect them, which is a bit of a gaff when they're ideal for keeping devices synced up.

My point was that PCs are still very relevant, but throwing money into this ad-campaign isn't helping when the features that would make them relevant are underdeveloped or non-existent. Hell, Windows 10 doesn't even support CalDAD and CardDAV properly, which is a huge omission; Microsoft are actually going backwards on interoperability rather than forwards!

PCs still relevant? No shit, look at Windows market share.Looks like people have a hard time understanding numbers here, Macs ARE NOT relevant, AT ALL.All you need to look at is market share.Stop looking at hipsters and students.

People who buy Apple are doing so for the style (and they don't mind paying more). Any difference (alleged) between the two in function are irrelevant.

Yeah, I'll remember your inane comment when I need to install a new boot drive in a Mac and to install the OS on the new drive all I need to do is a simple copy.

Try doing that on any Windows based computer and let me know the results (hint, it doesn't work).

That's inane to the average user. Apple is fashion. The way it's marketed and presents itself follows this logic. I don't have anything against Apple, they make great looking products, but are too expensive for me. The minor thing you mentioned is completely silly compared to possibly paying an extra $500 for that feature.

Quote:

Any difference (alleged) between the two in function are irrelevant.

I point out a difference that's not alleged and you still call it marketing? Umm, ok.

There are many others but I know you won't let facts get in the way of a good rant.

Have a nice day.

The thing you mentioned is not marketing and I didn't say it was, nor am I ranting. Apple has a culture attached to it. I have nothing against Apple, except that they're expensive. I can't even compare the usability of functionality, of Apple vs Windows, because I'm automatically priced out and I can't run steam. Well, I think steam does have presence on Mac, but few games would work.

IMO, people attach to Apple as a brand while PC is more agnostic. If you're really into Apple, great. Saying the "PC industry" is taking on Apple seems weird to me. Outside of the number of games, what does the PC have that a Mac can't do? The boot drive thing will mean nothing to most consumers and won't be appearing on Apple commercials.

I might be old skool, but to me, the dichotomy of Mac vs. PC never made any sense. They're all PCs (personal computers). But it's also clear that, regardless, the term "PC" makes little sense today, as my smartphone is a personal computer as much (if not, in some ways, more) as my desktop and laptop.

"PCs" and Macs are basically the same thing nowadays (i.e., they use the same guts, which wasn't always the case) The main difference is the OS they run (which can be replaced across the board, thus "hackingtosh" and linux boxes, Mac users using Windows, etc.) And with the increased use of VMs, using more than 1 OS has become trivial (not that it was particularly hard to do via dual boot or anything).

But kudos to Apple for managing to convince people otherwise, that was an impressive marketing feat that proved durable as well.

Well, in the "old" days, PC meant IBM PC compatible, and namely a Wintel (Windows on an Intel or other x86 CPU) machine. Mac was a PowerPC running MacOS. They were somewhat interchangeble, but not entirely. Whole suites of software only ran on one or the other, so some industries would use one or the other depending on their focus.

As I said in my first post on this story, I do think the OS (Windows vs. OSX) is still the determining factor between PC and Mac, but it's now much more likely that a user might switch back and forth between them.

Ugh, what click-bait. Admit it, Mark Walton. You knew exactly what would happen in the comments section. All the Microsoft Haters would just pounce on the opportunity to add their (endlessly repetitive) 2c to their on-going "Microsoft/PC Is Dead" circle-jerk. Hey, but at least you got clicks...

Ugh, what click-bait. Admit it, Mark Walton. You knew exactly what would happen in the comments section. All the Microsoft Haters would just pounce on the opportunity to add their (endlessly repetitive) 2c to their on-going "PC Is Dead" circle-jerk. Hey, but at least you got clicks...

Pathetic.

Well, if anyone believes PC is dead they need to get their head checked.And understand some numbers:

MS seems to lurch from one disaster to another.We have have had all the various windows disasters over the years, 2000, Vista, 8 and now pushing 10 down peoples throats.They fouled up the xbox, with extremely high failure rates that cost a fortune to replace, xbox one launch was also a complete mess and it looks like they will never catch Sony.Their Zune player was quickly dumped leaving partners adrift.They completely missed the internet revolution.They completely missed the whole mobile revolution and still are playing catchup.If it wasn't for a near monopoly of windows and to a lesser extent Office in the workplace subsidising everything else they would have went bust years ago.For one of the worlds leading tech companies quite frankly they are pretty bad.

Ever since the C2D/C2Q era, PCs have been good enough for what the vast majority of people do with them. You could even still be running a Core 2 and it would work fine as long it has an SSD and 4GB or more of RAM. People only upgrade now when they have a major hardware failure, which could take 5 or more years to happen. It's not that there is no market for PCs. It's that the days when people upgraded every 2-3 years are long gone, and PC manufacturers aren't sure what to do when people hang on to their computers for 5+ years.

Ultrabooks, where everything is usually glued and soldered on and non-repairable, seem like an attempt to get people back into that 2-3 year upgrade cycle with something that's thin and flashy looking. But ultrabooks have not been a hit with consumers, I think due to a combination of their high price tags and more tech saavy users not liking the lack upgradability and repairability.

I'm currently still running my core2quad 2.8gz, a mere 2GB RAM (since a moment of hamfistedness led me to rip one of the RAM slots off the mobo*) about 15TB of spinning platters, with 7 running from a 2013 samsung 1TB 3.5".

The only performance issue I ever hit is memory leaks *cough*firefox*cough* holding all the memory up and forcing me to kill something manually.

If I fit the graphics card I have for it in the drawer it plays games quite well too according to my daughter.

If it wasn't for the damaged RAM slot, I would probably upgrade to an SSD and keep it going for a few more years once it got too long in the tooth to use comfortably.

*for anyone who remembers, my attempt to keep it going for one year uptime ended when I tried to slide out an unused HDD from the mount and slammed it into the mobo as it suddenly slipped free! So to those who were concerned, it is now all fully updated and has been rebooted a few times since.

Microsoft makes $10/month from everyone who has an Office 365 subscription. That's $10/month regardless of whether people are using Office on a Windows PC, on a Mac, on an iDevice, on a Windows Phone, or on an Android phone. They gain more money by reaching the greatest number of subscribers; those subscriptions are far more valuable to them than keeping Office exclusive to Windows Phone in a vain attempt to get a few more percentage of people on Windows Phone.

Uh-huh. And why do you think MS are doing Office 365?

Because it's easier for most customers (and many businesses) to mentally justify a low-but-recurring cost instead of a high-but-one-time cost? Because selling their most popular software to all potential users is more important to their bottom line than trying to lock people into an unpopular phone OS? To make money, because that's what all businesses try to do?

Emphasis mine.

Now, given that 10 years ago Microsoft already had all of these users – both potential and existing – in its freaking pocket, what do you think changed?

Key word: HAD those customers. Obviously there were better alternatives, so customers went elsewhere.

Dude, you just spoiled the answer (OP was meant to work it out for himself).

The only reason MS is doing Office for Android is because it has to: because it's now one Hail Mary from being the next IBM… and that's if it's lucky.

MS owned the entire "personal" computing market. It did this by simple expedient of putting all its competitors out of business until it was the only game left in town.

That MS lost this unassailable position again was pure incompetence on its part: it fell asleep at the wheel sometime after 2000 - and when it finally did wake up again a decade later it discovered itself already neck-deep in a ditch while a nobody upstart and a laughing stock has-been were delightedly tearing laps around it. And the only reason Google and Apple managed do this was not because their products were any better (something far less relevant to success than tech geeks like to believe), but because MS was no longer doing even the minimum to ensure any possible future rivals never survived long enough to gain a foothold on its turf, never mind steal entire markets from it!

Saying MS are doing Android apps because it "wants to" or because it's "profitable" is absolutely hysterical. What's really more profitable? Selling a couple apps that run on someone else's platform to folks that would like to buy it, or selling all the apps, the platform, and every other bit of the stack as well to folks who have to buy it because it's the only option that exists.

..

Tech nerds may understand tech, but they sure as hell don't grok business (tech or otherwise) for crap.

Ugh, what click-bait. Admit it, Mark Walton. You knew exactly what would happen in the comments section. All the Microsoft Haters would just pounce on the opportunity to add their (endlessly repetitive) 2c to their on-going "PC Is Dead" circle-jerk. Hey, but at least you got clicks...

Pathetic.

Well, if anyone believes PC is dead they need to get their head checked.And understand some numbers:

"The problem is that you need to secure a big share of consumer market if you want to make it into business (because everyone wants to work on the same OS they have at home basically ; it seems it's the lesson we learned with Munich's - not sure it was Munich - trial to switch to LibreOffice)."

Munich didn't just switch from MS Office to OpenOffice (and now to LibreOffice), but switched from Windows to Linux, specifically their own distribution, LiMux, based on Ubuntu.It is not a "trial," but the project to make the change was declared completed in 2013.The city also provides free versions of Ubuntu to citizens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux

The problem is that you need to secure a big share of consumer market if you want to make it into business (because everyone wants to work on the same OS they have at home basically ; it seems it's the lesson we learned with Munich's - not sure it was Munich - trial to switch to LibreOffice).

Munich didn't just switch from MS Office to OpenOffice (and now to LibreOffice), but switched from Windows to Linux, specifically their own distribution, LiMux, based on Ubuntu.It is not a "trial," but the project to make the change was declared completed in 2013.The city also provides free versions of Ubuntu to citizens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux1

Ugh, what click-bait. Admit it, Mark Walton. You knew exactly what would happen in the comments section. All the Microsoft Haters would just pounce on the opportunity to add their (endlessly repetitive) 2c to their on-going "PC Is Dead" circle-jerk. Hey, but at least you got clicks...

Pathetic.

Well, if anyone believes PC is dead they need to get their head checked.And understand some numbers:

Nintendo also said the same thing. They completely owned the market (twice) and lost it (twice) to Sony simply by being too conservative.

Also, most people don't buy computers based solely on hardware performance like they did 15 years ago. Performance is now so plentiful that people are going with build quality and software.

The only reason that my desktop is a Windows PC and not an iMac is simply because I'm a gamer. I don't care about it being faster than an iMac because I run Windows for the software that I use. If I weren't a gamer then I'd likely have an iMac because I also have an iPhone and those work well together. Or, in other words, for the software.

This ad set brings to mind the Microsoft commercials that featured Jerry Seinfeld. Cringe-worthy, sad and creepy, and ultimately inept.

Beyond the terrible marketing itself, these ads continue a well-worn pattern (well, rut) that started forever ago and hasn't changed: while the Apple commercials focus warmly, and pretty quietly, on what you can do with their products, going after emotional impact, their Android/Windows counterparts yell (literally at times) about clock speeds, 360-degree hinges and "state of the art music" (whatever that means). Like watching late-night locally-made used car commercials. Or old Ballmer commercials.

This ad set brings to mind the Microsoft commercials that featured Jerry Seinfeld. Cringe-worthy, sad and creepy, and ultimately inept.

Beyond the terrible marketing itself, these ads continue a well-worn pattern (well, rut) that started forever ago and hasn't changed: while the Apple commercials focus warmly, and pretty quietly, on what you can do with their products, going after emotional impact, their Android/Windows counterparts yell (literally at times) about clock speeds, 360-degree hinges and "state of the art music" (whatever that means). Like watching late-night locally-made used car commercials. Or old Ballmer commercials.

On the one hand, this all seems so logical and straightforward: they want to sell their products, so they get together and make ads that flaunt the products' features, and they spend some money with an ad agency (internal or external) to give the ads some appeal and make them fun. Standard operating procedure for anyone selling anything.

And yet, somehow, the result seems like something from a different world...a remnant from a time-warp, or a cultural mismatch like those 1990s Mentos ads; a case of someone just being completely out of touch with any sense of contemporary reality. It's not just the style of the ads; it's the whole thing; it goes all the way down to the products themselves.

It's hopeless; it can't be fixed. It does exactly what they don't want it to do: it painfully highlights the obsolescence and modern in-applicability of the whole idea. It's like listening to Skiffle or Swing music after the Beatles have hit, or watching Logan's Run a year later after Star Wars has come out. It's the past.

Maybe the Mac fanboy (as you called them) know the concept of resale value... The initial cost of an Apple product may be higher, but it's resale value is way more than any PC you can find. I have sold a 5 years old Macbook Pro for 400$ (with a dead battery that the buyer was aware of). I tried recently to sell my 5 years old DELL XPS 15 laptop with no luck (unless I practically give it away for free). But yeah, I'm probably a Mac fanboy for knowing the value of a product...

A little research shows that the list price of the 2011 Macbook Pro was about $1800 to $2100, depending on the CPU and display. In that same year the Dell XPS 15 was available in a variety of configurations and sold for between $800 and $1500

You may know the concept of resale value, and you may know the value of a product, but you might just want to go over your math one more time before chalking that $400 resale value up as an unqualified win.

There's also the matter of timing, which the OP doesn't go into, but implies that the Mac was sold earlier than the Dell. The market for home computers in general has been slowing in recent years, and the recession certainly didn't do the market any favors, either.

And...I honestly don't know anyone at all who would buy a 5 year old laptop, regardless of manufacturer.

I've spent A LOT of time to find a mid-range (i.e. more like €500 than €1000) laptop that's light, portable but not too small (IOW about 13.3") and has good battery life (~8 hours). I couldn't even find one with more than 5 hours runtime, at least not below a 1000 bucks. In other words, I couldn't even find a replacement that's better in every attribute than my ass-old el-cheapo Acer laptop. New machines are worse on almost all points, for a similar price like I paid in 2010.

Ok fine, I bought a used ThinkPad X220 instead, fast enough for me, light, battery life > 10 hours. But seriously, the state of the PC industry is f'ing SAD. If you don't want to buy a Mac but want similar attributes, there's NOTHING out there.

PCs still relevant? No shit, look at Windows market share.Looks like people have a hard time understanding numbers here, Macs ARE NOT relevant, AT ALL.All you need to look at is market share.Stop looking at hipsters and students.

I think you've mistaken the word "relevant" for meaning "most popular" or "selling the most units".

The whole point is that Macs aren't declining as quickly as other PCs when compared against smart phones and tablets. The reason for this is that they're maintaining relevance by integrating tightly with iOS devices, effectively becoming an integral part of the whole digital lifestyle I described. Windows PCs don't currently do this (or at least not as well), which makes them stand out from tablets/smart-phones, rather than immediately complementing them, and this, IMO, is partly the reason for the decline of the PC market.

The point really is that PCs need to make themselves complement phones/tablets, rather than be rivals to them, as the latter is a losing battle right now as people are finding that more and more of what they do can be done without a PC at all.

The only reason that my desktop is a Windows PC and not an iMac is simply because I'm a gamer.

Even there, you're becoming the exception rather than the rule, with casual mobile gaming accounting for most bums on seats going forward. The difference is, of course, that high-end gaming should always be a highly profitable market, making up for smaller numbers with higher margins, thanks to an audience with plenty disposable income and leisure time that is delighted to dispose of it in return for the "best" experience possible. (i.e. The same technique Apple uses to stay profitable.)

The major loser is the console vendors, who traditionally made up their unit sales out of the casual gaming sector (which mobile has totally eaten), and recovered their initial high investment through the long lifecycle of each platform (since chips that cost the earth at the start of a console's life will be costing peanuts after the first couple years, c/o Moore). It was a terrific trick too: sell dedicated gaming hardware that provides easily the best experience-per-dollar upon its big-splash release, then rely on market capture to keep that platform going for the next decade, long after the slow-but-constant trickle of generic ("PC") hardware improvement has passed by it again.

However, with mobile offering a "good enough" experience that is much more convenient, and custom ("PC") hardware offering the "best" experience at any time you want it, I suspect that strategy's day is pretty much done. Assuming console and PC vendors don't have their heads completely in the sand (and that's a pretty big assumption), I wouldn't be entirely surprised if they finally end up in a Steam Machine-style convergence. Rather than one producing a single closed fixed-lifetime device and the others an endless variety of poorly distinguished 'Swiss army knife' boxes that are notorious jacks of all trades and masters of none, have a relatively narrow specification for building specialized-PC like machines that run a tailored gaming-specific OS and software/media ecosystem. Don't put a spinny disk in it, for example (most folks'll use the cloud for media storage, and those with money to burn should provide a nice little earner for zero-config RAID attachments), but do require it boots to usable state in well under a second. That'd supply the constant incremental evolution that is console's greatest weakness, along with the zero-effort turn-key experience where generic PC hardware and OS invariably fall far short.

That's the sort of thing they all should be doing: building new vigorous, vibrant markets by offering the best dedicated experience; not wringing their hands over he senescence of the old, and attempting to cling on to a now-passed heyday until their own fear of change renders themselves not just obsolete but redundant entirely.

PCs still relevant? No shit, look at Windows market share.Looks like people have a hard time understanding numbers here, Macs ARE NOT relevant, AT ALL.All you need to look at is market share.Stop looking at hipsters and students.

The reason for this is that they're maintaining [Macintosh] relevance by integrating tightly with iOS devices

Is this still true?

The first iPod leveraged iTunes when it was a Mac-only application (so that anyone wanting an iPod needed a Mac, no exceptions, full stop). Once Apple had released iTunes for Windows, their entire mobile-device world became platform-agnostic.

A few years later, the iPhone became self-sustaining (recite in Schwarzenegger "T-800" voice) so that you didn't need a computer at all. Your photos still ended up in iPhoto on the Mac but even that stopped with their iCloud/"Photos"-app switchover last year.

I'm not sure what arrangement exists for Photos to migrate to Windows machines -- isn't there a web interface for "photos in the cloud"? -- but I don't think anyone still says "I have an iPhone, so therefore I should have a Mac."